Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Strangling Aunty Perilous Times For The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1St Ed 2021 Edition Small All Chapter
Strangling Aunty Perilous Times For The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1St Ed 2021 Edition Small All Chapter
“In her lament for a sadly diminished national icon, Dr Small describes how in this
digital world, the ABC “has left the private box and joined the mosh pit”. How
“opinion has not only infiltrated fact in news, raised voices drown out ‘old’ stan-
dards of ethics, knowledge and probity”. She blames the broadcaster’s declining
audiences on poor leadership and squandered cultural capital, not politicians or
media rivals. Required reading for ABC friends, politicians and, all media students.”
—Maurice Newman AC, former Chairman, Australian
Broadcasting Corporation
“In this engrossing and comprehensive volume, Dr Small uses Pierre Bourdieu’s
theories to show that Australia’s premier public broadcaster, the ABC, has been
more effective in holding power to account when it controls its own élite field
because that’s where it has legitimate authority. She argues for a more empowered,
nuanced and proactive mindset to meet the needs of a world seeking neutrality and
fact. It’s an urgently needed book.”
—Dr John Cokley, CQUniversity
Virginia Small
Strangling Aunty:
Perilous Times for the
Australian
Broadcasting
Corporation
Virginia Small
University of New South Wales
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, NSW, Australia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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Acknowledgements
v
Contents
7 Future Options 897
References985
Index1097
vii
About the Author
ix
List of Images
Image 1.1 The ABC takes the field (literally): Sporting announcer
Talbot Duckmanton standing (with technician
Stanley Bancroft seated) providing radio commentary from a
Sydney golf course, c. late 1940s. From this relatively simple
start, the ABC developed a pivotal role in presenting sports
to Australians. Duckmanton became General Manager of the
ABC from 1965–1982. Bancroft retired as ABC Supervisor
Radio Operation, NSW in 1974 after 50 years’ service. Both
men’s suited attire, while a reflection of the times, also
expressed how the institution valued unseen radio. Image
courtesy of the National Archives of Australia. NAA: C1748,
L1732121
Image 1.2 The ABC Lissajous (far right) in a sticker made by Friends of
the ABC on a light pole in a Canberra public carpark. It
shows how the ABC has been appropriated as an endangered
“animal” (icon), along with the Australian animals the
platypus (far left) and koala (middle). All have been
anthropomorphised with mournful eyes and the stark
dissimilarities between a national institution and national
fauna overlooked to press the link between the ABC and
Australian identity—the space of shared habitus between the
three. Photo: Virginia Small 76
xi
xii List of Images
Image 6.1 Dame Enid Lyons, federal politician and ABC board member
1951–1962. Photographer: Athol Smith, F.R.P.S Melbourne.
1950. Courtesy of the National Archives of Australia. ABC
publicity photos. Item 3062, series SP1011/1. Item ID
5410755. Sydney 802
Image 7.1 Lord Mayor of Sydney, Alderman Harry Jensen, showing
artwork in his Sydney Town Hall office to VD Madgulkar
(All India Radio, Poona) right, and Abu Bakar bin Ahmad
(Brunei Radio), left, participants in a three months’ rural
broadcasting course in 1960. It was organised by the ABC
under the Federal Government’s Colombo Plan. Courtesy of
the National Archives of Australia. Photographer, John
Tanner. 1960. Series: A1501, A2456/3. Item ID: 8890053.
Canberra940
List of Tables
xv
CHAPTER 1
The Commission has realised that it has a certain responsibility in the matter
of public education, since it controls a facility for spreading information
upon every subject to thousands of citizens.5
The first annual report in 1932 added this arresting point about the
ABC’s role educating Australians:
1. That the ABC has been a central force in “defining, describing and
delimiting what it is possible to say and not possible to say” (Kress,
1985)9 in discourses on Australia’s nationhood and identity, obtain-
ing consensus, creating national idioms and legitimating and
upholding its parliamentary democracy and institutions that form
the struts of its civil society.
2. That the organisation has been undergoing major changes over
many years that have contributed to its decline, subject to a diverse
range of pressures that cannot be blamed exclusively and solely on
malicious politicians, destructive commercial media actors, or
funding cuts.
3. Therefore, that the challenged times of the ABC can also be attrib-
uted to a lack of planning and understanding by ABC leadership and
governments of the critical need to value and preserve its esteemed
reputational and prized experimental status as it made the necessary
transition from a PSB to a PSM outfit.
2020a).11 The consequences of the loss of AAP would have been pro-
found. Firstly, this near collapse of AAP revealed the high degree of piracy
carried out by the internet media platforms looting content that had been
paid for by news outlets who employed journalists and paid attendant
costs such as salaries, rental of premises, electricity bills, staff superannua-
tion, recreation and other leave, tea for the tea room, et cetera; second, it
connoted the extraordinary impact of disinformation (fake news) where
crowd-sourcing has devalued the individual, investigative, time-consuming
work of journalists (Dailey & Starbird, 2014)12; third, and allied to this,
was how easily the public’s sense of genuine news had been violated and
perverted; and fourth, the ABC is Australia’s only other significant
independent news gatherer—albeit even after a shift away from the
industrial model of media production. It is a sobering situation for a liberal
democracy challenged by autocratic nation states, online security threats
as well as what a Brookings Institute report identified as a populist
challenge trying to “drive a wedge between democracy and liberalism”
(Galston, 2018).13
Content that was plucked from Australian media companies had, up
until 2020, been available to Google, Facebook and the like for free. It
augmented the content on social media where news is sourced widely, as a
consequence of this free abundance. The Digital News Report produced
by Reuters Institute and Oxford University found that the largest group
they surveyed (36%) was educated in the news via social media, 35% did an
internet search, while 31% retrieved news from direct entry to a news
source (Newman et al., 2016).14 It showed that news was being curated
and filtered by algorithms based on popularity and “hits”. No longer is
Aunty seen as the singular wise, elder woman who knows what’s best for
us to know. Australians have moved on. This change in news consumption
is dramatic and cannot be underestimated on its ramifications for main-
taining an educated and informed society. It has led to a consequential loss
in Aunty’s monopolistic educational presence in the public sphere. The
main questions it prompts for the purposes of looking beyond this research
are: “Who are the new online educators?”, “What is their information?”
and “How do they contribute to a healthy, vibrant liberal democracy?”.
The Reuters Institute and Oxford University report pointed out that
public service broadcasters around the world were facing questions: about
perceived biases, about free news competing with paid content and about
whether public funds should continue to pay for public media. Over-
arching this is the umbrella concern that PSM is now a dated concept
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 7
anyway by virtue of its ‘dated’ creation at a time of need after the turn of
the twentieth century. All media outfits and their actors, including the
PSM, struggle to get eyeballs on their online content. While the Reuters
Institute and Oxford University research did not look at Australia’s ABC,
several points made can be extrapolated to include the ABC. Those sur-
veyed did point out that older broadcasters tended to be considered more
reliable, built-up by virtue of their longevity. Sixty-four per cent of
Australians said they shared or commented on news; however, the research
noted that “sharing and commenting on the news is still largely the prov-
ince of a small group of dedicated and highly motivated users”. These
people then become the opinion makers, which deserves further research
into the veracity of news and growing resort to experts who inform news
reports. Also, and perhaps most challenging, is that everyone is not
continuously online reading and sharing news—in other words, not all are
online all day, every day. This is an erroneous but concomitant assumption
made by politicians of social media where politicians readily chop and
change policy, for example, when social media turns hostile towards them.
This is another area challenging governments and credible, consistent
policy-making.
This book is an effort to bring clarity to controversy, promote informed,
respectful discussion and strong support for the ABC, in describing the
sort of media world to which it may continue to contribute and thrive.
There is no single trope or potted explanation of the ABC because there
has been a confluence of forces and activities exerted on the organisation
over time and it is only through the enduring tenacity of the institution
and the legacy affection of Australians that it survives. The ABC was estab-
lished to provide cohesion to Australian culture and a sense of Australian
identity. Its early mission called the organisation to educate Australians as
to who they were and to what they could aspire, culturally and politically.
The ABC drew the cultural borders and built bridges of understanding.
The ABC defined Australians’ place in the world. The organisation was
charged with locating and building Australian patriotism, as a unifying
concept—not an internally divisive one, and the ABC has had to rise to the
challenge of engaging and reflecting a contemporary Australia that moved
from a British-based culture to one of the most multicultural, multi-faith
nations in the world. On that formidable scale alone, the ABC’s task (and
Australia’s) has been immense and extraordinarily successful. The
relationship between the ABC and governments’ policies on that could
have worked well (mostly). Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau
8 V. SMALL
what was once referred to as ‘new’ media. Ultimately, the research finds it
is struggling and Aunty’s voice is being strangled.
The genesis of ABC cultural capital was in its Institutional Logics artic-
ulated at its launch in 1932 to: “provide information and entertainment,
culture and gaiety, and to serve all sections and satisfy the diverse tastes of
the public” (Inglis, 1983, quoting Lyons).17 This preceding quote situ-
ated the case that the ABC had a primary role as an educator in 1932 as
signalled by the Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons’ launch speech. While it
was allowed to “collect news” (ibid.) it had to support Australian culture
as its primary role, not broadcast news. The ABC, therefore, had nascent
“artistic legitimacy” (Bourdieu, 1984).18 It was this that built the audi-
ences and subsequent respect invested in the organisation. Later, it evolved
into a unique outfit of news collection and dissemination in Australia
remote from the commercial and advertising pressures to sell news (and,
therefore, aloof from the pressures of vested interests). It had operated
concurrently with commercial media but had also become entrenched as
the ‘über’ media institution playing a dominant role in media, cultural and
intellectual life, giving free and universal access to ABC content, funded
by licence fees for radio and then television until 1974 when they were
ended by the then Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Universality of
access and content has been the basis of the ABC, offering diverse content
to cater for all Australian tastes. Now it grapples with algorithms and filter
bubbles—a contradictory situation for PSM. In essence, it quests for
bespoke content to meet individual interests—yet is required to serve a
general audience.
This book makes the claim that the ABC forged its respected position
in Australian society because of its initial and sustained status as a purveyor
of participatory culture and as an educator in culture. Its reputation for
probity and excellence in investigative journalism came much later. But
the ABC has been drawing down on its remaining cultural capital reserves
in recent times amidst claims of inaccuracies, partiality, trivialisation and
bias. Journalism augmented the ABC’s cultural status, but did not form it,
so the deletion of cultural content (this includes in-house drama produc-
tions and the decision to avoid covering the 2020 Olympic Games (moved
to 2021 because of the Coronavirus pandemic) and platforming strident
and legally contentious opinions on social media as representative of all
Australian publics are some examples of how it has seriously challenged its
status as an Australian icon and institution tasked with being universal—
‘all to all’. Scannell (2005) said institutions, such as PSMs, faced the
10 V. SMALL
But the ABC’s Head of News, Gaven Morris, also revealed that while
the ABC “loved” its older audience, it was now looking at “an audience
growth strategy” (Duke, 2009a) because of what were described as falling
television audiences and static numbers of radio listeners. Morris added
none of the ABC’s new approaches would mean it was competing with
commercial media outlets (Loc. Cit.). Former ABC Chairman, Jim
Spigelman, said: “independent surveys have consistently affirmed that
about nine in ten Australians believe that the ABC provides ‘valuable ser-
vices’ to the Australian community and about half believe that the services
are ‘very valuable’” (Spigelman, 2013).29 Past Managing Director,
Geoffrey Whitehead, identified these key issues facing the ABC, that also
pointed to the evolving participatory media environment: “for radio, how
to distribute an existing valuable program content more effectively to
more Australians; for television, how to divert more resources into distinc-
tive, entertaining as well as informative Australian content” (Whitehead,
1988).30
In terms of Bourdieu’s theories of practice, field, symbolic power and
cultural capital, Aunty has no mastery or legitimacy in the perilous
commercial media field. It is a field that is at odds with her public service,
publicly-funded remit. Yet, with the ABC now operating in the commercial
field the consequence has been that the informed news needed in the
public sphere is being strangled in a diverse mêlée of operators scrabbling
for “hits” (popularity) and paying subscribers. Commercial news enter-
prises are businesses run for profit. News is published to sell. The end of
the ‘rivers of gold’ of classified advertisements for newspapers and the shift
in advertising online, the promotion of opinion in lieu of facts, and the
audience reluctance to pay for editorial content and insatiable hunger for
entertaining news that can be shared on social media means competition
is relentless and ferocious.
This book argues that the ABC ventured promptly, innocently and
wholeheartedly into this digital commercial content field without valuing
the special nature of its existing field, élite cultural capital and reputa-
tional capital that was its unique ‘selling point’ and access point for all
Australians. The ABC must belong in the digital space, prominently, but
in the process of wanting to fit-in and be ‘liked’ in this new field means one
of two assumptions were made: (1) much of Aunty’s capital has been
devalued because it was considered dated and ‘old hat’ or, (2) the organ-
isation assumed that its reputational capital and cultural capital were
perennial qualities that would follow it everywhere and anywhere.
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 13
1932 to the present. These matters have been addressed ably and in detail
by extant grey and academic literature written by ABC historians and for-
mer ABC employees. This literature includes: Bolton (1967), Dixon
(1975), Inglis (1983, 2006), Thomas (1980), Semmler (1981), Buttrose
(1984), Pullan (1986), Whitehead (1988), Davis (1988), Molomby
(1991), Petersen (1993), Littlemore (1996), Williams (1996), Dempster
(2000), Salter (2007), Scott (2016), O’Brien (2018) and Holmes (2019).
Several of these books appear to “set the record straight” or “settle scores”
and some contain personalised and anecdotal accounts. Cunningham
(2013) said the majority of literature on the ABC had been focused on its
history or commentary and this was either defending or attacking the
organisation but that “an analysis of its innovation track record may offer
a more nuanced pathway” (Cunningham, 2013).35 It is the intention of
this book to address the shortcomings in the literature by contributing to
that discussion with a view to the future of Australia’s only fully publicly
funded, universal media service in an ecology of high-pressure, innovative,
niche media and technology.
Therefore, this book does not seek to replicate the magisterial works of
Professor Ken Inglis who wrote two books on the history of the ABC. His
works encompassed until 2006. Inglis’ analyses of the ABC are often anec-
dotal and personal (especially Inglis, 1983, pp. 45, 87, 65, 116, 149, 256,
331, 398, 415; Inglis, 2006, pp. 126, 239, 295, 342, 393, 462, 468, 492,
514, 522). Instead, this book seeks to take up the story of the ABC, but
through a lens that analyses selected aspects of leadership, institution and
policies and the key challenges of media technology which have impacted
on and will influence the ABC’s future. As this text seeks to analyse the
organisation using Institutional Logics, it will interrogate management
and leadership practices and symbols through language (Thornton et al.,
2012a)36 and Bourdieu’s field theory using content which is on the public
record. It will also pursue themes based on in-confidence interviews with
former prime ministers of the Commonwealth of Australia, former ABC
Managing Directors, former ABC chairs, former ABC board members and
former ABC senior staff. However, all quotes from former political lead-
ers, former chairs, former managers and former staff included in this book
have been taken from the public record only. These quotes sometimes
reference earlier managers where there are linkages with similar issues,
visions and impacts in setting up the role and public expectations of the
ABC and how these have been re-interpreted by the ABC in a digitally
connected commercial media ecology.
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 15
The purpose of this book is to test the claim that when the ABC con-
trolled the élite field of media it was far more effective in holding power to
account because it had agency in the élite field—where power resides. The
ABC once had a strong capability in ‘jostling’ and pressuring politicians
and public figures. The ABC insisted on a higher standard of questioning
with a researched, knowledge-based approach to topics being interro-
gated. This book aims to discover a new discernment of how the ABC has
functioned as a uniquely Australian 100% taxpayer-funded public service
media enterprise, the impact of digitisation and the pervasive in-roads of
social media on the organisation. There are diverse forces at work that are
strangling the voice of Aunty—a dear, smart, elderly lady who lives in chal-
lenging times. This book suggests the way forward and how she may sur-
vive it all. The ABC exists in a self-described “digitally-disrupted” age
(Hua, 2016). But it could be more aptly be described as a “digitally-dis-
turbed” age with a psychological reference to the perturbations caused by
the merger of news with social media and, in addition to this, shackled
with a widespread lethargy for the public funding of anything, and new
challenges ahead in the aftermath of the Australian (world) economy
being trampled by the novel Coronavirus pandemic, which was both a
health and economic crisis for the nation (and the world). The conse-
quences of paying for these twin crises means in the future governments,
to use the old proverb, will be ‘turning coins twice’ before spending them.
A re-doubled economic restraint by governments may have even more
consequences for the ABC, as the downturn in advertising and the econ-
omy is having for the traditional commercial media where there have been
massive staff losses in an industry already suffering from the targeted and
cheaper advertising of digital media (Pascoe, 202037; Mason, 2020b38).
It will canvas how the ABC can re-build itself as the élite media organisa-
tion and return to being an individuated standard-setter, a flag-bearer
within its new field of commercial media.
Through a theoretical framework, this book argues:
commercial field also has its rationale. This is the doxa of the field, or the
self-evident truths of the field.53 The ABC rushed into the commercial field
without taking a new doxa of a new field—place of institutional operation—
into account. This book will re-visit some of the history of the ABC and
its self-evident truths, but only to contextualise the current perils it faces,
or as a means of backgrounding issues being analysed.
This book also argues that instead of its BBC basis being a “cultural
straightjacket” (Martin, 2002)54 it accrued capital successfully in its élite,
privileged Australian field that gave it the status of being the nation’s most
respected and loved broadcaster. It is the apparent abandonment of this field
and pressures from government and the media itself to embrace the digital
audiences that has forced the ABC to compete in a hostile and foreign com-
petitive field of commercial media. A field where it does not belong and to
which Aunty arrived leaving her cultural capital in her old field—she aban-
doned her “superannuation fund” of cultural capital when she left her
“ABC field”. Her cultural capital turned out to be an impermanent attri-
bute in the rough and tumble of commercial and online media. Aunty is
challenged to find the high ground and carve out her own field within the
field, in order to survive. She has to expend much time, planning and effort
again if she is to re-build her cultural capital. Aunty not only took the theo-
retical field, as a sports reporting outfit, she literally took the field and has
been a trail-blazer in terms of sports coverage, breadth of activities covered
and the cultivation of knowledgeable presenters. It also was an institution
that promoted from within its ranks and Image 1.1 shows how the man who
would one day lead the institution began as a golf (sports) reporter in the
1940s. The other man, the sound technician, was also promoted to a leader-
ship role. It was a sign of the prominence with which the ABC sought to
place itself in a field that served all tastes and interests in sport.
The ABC’s adoption of commercial narratives and formats means the
ABC has undergone a loss of differentiation, which had been critical in the
past to justifying its funding. It is in pursuit of ABC leaders’ new visions of
‘relevance’ and ‘digital story-telling’ and ‘digital narratives’ but without
incorporating the hard-won credibility of its past. It is also surprising that
the ABC is so shocked by the fierce competition in the ABC’s new field
where it offers its work for free in a monetised field. That there is anger and
bewilderment about this clash is puzzling because it is simple business
economics. It is a market and Aunty is in it. Bourdieu (1983) described field
as a semi-autonomous sphere of activity where “homologies” (similarities
between different parts and structures) show links between an institution’s
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 21
Image 1.1 The ABC takes the field (literally): Sporting announcer Talbot
Duckmanton standing (with technician Stanley Bancroft seated) providing radio
commentary from a Sydney golf course, c. late 1940s. From this relatively simple
start, the ABC developed a pivotal role in presenting sports to Australians.
Duckmanton became General Manager of the ABC from 1965–1982. Bancroft
retired as ABC Supervisor Radio Operation, NSW in 1974 after 50 years’ service.
Both men’s suited attire, while a reflection of the times, also expressed how the
institution valued unseen radio. Image courtesy of the National Archives of
Australia. NAA: C1748, L17321
22 V. SMALL
A testimony to the success with which the ABC handled the musical educa-
tion of Australia, or at least of a certain group of Australians. (Thomas, 1980)61
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 23
The ABC’s cultural capital was such that it became a mark of social
distinction in Australian life to say you were an avid viewer or listener,
naming presenters or programs added to one’s personal status and to say
“I love the ABC” was an all-encompassing nod to its content and the
backflow of cultural capital it bestowed on the individual. It indicated you
were of the privileged, Australian élite. The ABC acquired Bourdieu’s
(1986) three forms of cultural capital through these practices: embodied:
“embodied long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body” (Bourdieu,
1986),62 carried out through the logics of the ABC Charter, policies, “this
is the way we do things”; objectified: “in the form of cultural goods (pic-
tures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.)” (Bourdieu, ibid.)
where in the case of the ABC its objects were content, former physical
ABC Shops around Australia (shops were closed and moved to online sales
in 2015 and this ended altogether in 2018), websites and the logo; and
institutionalised: “a form of objectification … it confers entirely original
properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee”
(Loc. Cit.) such as the boastful audience members who claim their dedica-
tion to the organisation (described previously) as well as the enduring
support of the lobby group “Friends of the ABC”.
The ABC had given Australians access to informed social positions
(Bourdieu, 1984)63 on music, the arts, intellectual debate. The ABC was
never “explicitly demanding”64 (ibid.) of attention ipso facto—it was not
compulsory, or a solo media operator; rather because of the organisation’s
range of content and vast footprint, it became inevitable (and sometimes
through no choice in regional Australia) that many Australians were part
of the audience. ABC audiences also became attached by timetabled con-
tent and incorporated listening (and viewing) in their daily routines (“I
always listen to the 6.00 am news bulletin while I’m getting breakfast”,
and so on). Australian ABC audiences became loyal followers of content;
they religiously watched the investigative television current affairs pro-
gram “Four Corners” each Monday (and previously Saturday evening,
repeated on Sunday), launched in 1961; they listened each morning to the
flagship but now defunct 15 minute “7.45 News” bulletin on ABC Radio.
In 2020 this bulletin was cancelled as “part of a major overhaul of the
national broadcaster” (Worthington & Hitch, 2020).65 The bulletin
divided into 10 minutes of national news and five minutes of state news
had been a jewel in the crown of the ABC’s cultural capital, but it was no
longer supported or recognised as such by the organisation. The cultural
capital of the bulletin had been built up since 1947, when the first
24 V. SMALL
independent ABC News bulletin went on air (Inglis, 1983)66 and with the
7.45 am main bulletin and the major 7.00 pm report “news bulletins were
the ABC’s most popular offerings” (Inglis, ibid.)67 with bulletins preceded
by The Majestic Fanfare news theme from 1952 (Loc. Cit.), adding clas-
sical music heft to the cultural capital of the product and:
This book furthers research called for by Nick Couldry (2004) who
suggested researchers “decentre media research from the study of media
texts or production structures” and instead focus on practices in and
around the media (Couldry, ibid.).68 To further that aim, the book will
analyse theoretical frameworks being applied to this analysis of the “stran-
gling of Aunty” by considering the institutional role of the ABC. Using
Bourdieu’s (1984) field, practice and habitus theories this chapter will
analyse using a degree of exegesis the role of the ABC in field, practice and
habitus; and how it once set a standard for educating Australians by
providing access to information and arts by acting as gatekeeper of what it
considered, as a representative institution, the noteworthy constituent
elements of Australianness. The ABC’s focus on this was articulated by the
Managing Director, David Anderson, who told a 2019 senate estimates
committee hearing into the Federal Government’s ABC budget freeze for
three years (costing the broadcaster AUD83.7 million) that its future
depended on localisation:
One of our priorities for the future is certainly to remain as local as possi-
ble … our role is to reflect the culture and community of the country back
to itself. You struggle to do that unless you are local. (Dalzell, 2019)69
It signalled a shift from the national to the local, the presumed repre-
sentative of the national. As a corollary, this book will conduct a prosopo-
graphical analysis of what constitutes the Australian élite who have
supported the broadcaster and the field it occupied because “certain con-
ditions of existence are designated” (Bourdieu, 1984)70 and then re-
enacted, and this process has ensured the survival of the institution funded
to be a representative national, rather than local, institution. It will examine
1 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND LOSING THE FIELD 25
how the ABC has negotiated its role as a key member of the Fourth Estate
in Australia, and whether the concept of the Fourth Estate is sustainable
and credible enough in a digitally-disrupted media. Bourdieu scholars
Benson and Neveu (2005)71 said journalistic agents “possess high volumes
of power” (ibid.) and Bourdieu (1998)72 stated this power was such that:
In the case of the ABC, it has exercised its power in its field through a
record of journalism that was incisive, consequential and investigative, for
example, and its journalists winning annual Walkley Awards73 in a peer-
awarded acknowledgement of their efforts in grappling with weighty and
pertinent national matters that have had complicated and consequential
repercussions in confronting destructive power relations and manifesta-
tions of corruption, for example.
The ABC has exerted cultural power in other ways. For example,
through the insistence on an educated British accent of presenters in
organisation’s early days, transitioning to educated Australian accents,
then general Australian accents. Allied with this early development of the
ABC was the management of the spoken word and preference for the
British accent among presenters. The late Australian historian Manning
Clark said the early ABC promulgated a “dyed in the wool” (Clark, 1995,
1962)74 British view of the world, its interests and values. The recruitment
of male radio presenters in the early days who were expected to wear din-
ner suits when announcing in the evening was another cultural statement,
albeit largely unseen. Cultural assertions will be unpacked later in this
chapter. Then, in the appointments of men with knighthoods as chairmen
of the ABC from the creation of the Australian Broadcasting Commission
in 1932 with Sir Charles Lloyd-Jones to Sir Henry Bland in 1976 (the
exception is William Cleary in 1934), and the development of talks by
university professors in the earlier years of radio. All with an eye to
economic capital in terms of measuring its relevance through audience
feedback and later ratings. So, while it has economic capital through a
budgetary allocation, it actually obtained its autonomy through its cultural
26 V. SMALL
When the environment with which they are actually confronted is too far
distant from that to which they are objectively fitted. (Bourdieu, ibid.)77
Journalistic field
Power
(political and economic
pressures of budgets, political influences, impact of commercial and social media, digitisation,
ratings)
Diagram 1.1 Diagram of the field and power. Influences upon the ABC within
the Journalistic field—(using Bourdieu’s field theory interpreted by Small)
28 V. SMALL
caused media institutions to drift and merge into what is being described
as the emergent commercial media field dominated by social media. As a
consequence of this, the rules of how public and commercial media oper-
ate have changed. Media is now tempted to absorb the rules of the wild
west of social media; and, in the rush to be first has tended to adopt a
sameness in style, ethical approach and content. The preceding diagram
illustrates how the media, in general, has acknowledged the advent of a
new social media field by actually drifting into the field. However, for the
point of this analysis the ABC is the focus of attention, not shifts by
commercial media. The ABC has adapted to the habitus of the emergent
commercial field. Bourdieu (1990) described habitus as encompassing:
“the unconscious taking in of rules, values and dispositions”, whereby
people live in social space, and individually and collectively “internalise
their position in social space” (Bourdieu, ibid.).78 Generic statements such
as “this is the way we do this here” indicate the habitus of the group or
organisation and the ABC exhibits its unique habitus through its marketing,
for example, by ironically encouraging a sameness with social media in
implicitly encouraging staff to contribute, or ‘like’ opinions and views
online, for instance. Habitus refers to the way the individual responds to
social situations based on their own learning and understanding and what
society tells them is acceptable. In this case, it is being used to refer to an
organisation and its actors, how they enact their cultural capital and how
they show taste (Bourdieu, 1984)79 for the arts or academic research or
information, for example. They acquire habitus through social engagement.
Habitus is valued habits:
bankers who buy and sell money, yet are challenged similarly by ethics,
restraint and the profit motive. Journalists are guided by professional
ethical values that dovetail generally with corporate mission statements,
but these provide aspiration rather than regulations or law. There is no
ultimate, independent body or singular legislation that calls all Australian
journalists to account, for example, except for the Journalists’ Code of
Ethics in Australia and individual news organisations’ codes of conduct,
mission statements and policies, as mentioned, as well as media laws. ABC
journalists are now part of the larger crowd of unindividuated operators
who all call themselves journalists, trained or not, vying for attention on
social media and craving ‘likes’ to support their work. Once ABC journal-
ists did not need ‘likes’—they just did their public service and were
esteemed and self-satisfied with that. That is no longer adequate where
social media provokes and supports ambition, careers and popularity. The
ABC’s abandonment of its own field has created new challenges and pres-
sures for ABC journalists in the organisation’s rush to get its content
online, make itself popular and promote journalists as celebrities and
newsmakers. The discrete, detached, remote role of the self-effacing
observer journalist has long passed.
The ABC had cultural capital and prestige through its agency in its
own field within Australian society. Its cultural capital was mistakenly
assumed by its institutional leaders to be an enduring quality, but has
proved not so. Since the era of digitisation much of its unique status has
declined because its cultural capital is not an enduring lifeline in the
‘rough and tumble’ of the emergent commercial field. Bourdieu (1983)
warned about the diminishment of cultural capital which like the field:
“the accumulation has to be reproduced with every generation or it is
lost” (ibid.)90 and while the ABC’s cultural capital had been institutionalised
(Bourdieu, 1983): “capital does not exist and function except in relation
to a field” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).91 This book will examine how
there exists institutional mechanisms and organisational oversights by
which cultural capital has been formed and lost. The ABC has had to
move away from its special field into the crowded, noisy, commercial field
and within that field in Australia one news organisation dominates—News
Corporation. Lured and pushed by the rise of changed media, cheaper
content distribution and bigger audiences, the ABC’s prioritisation of
digital technology was seen as the most effective way of growing,
containing costs and keeping audiences. But in that embrace, it has made
32 V. SMALL
Shortly after the British Broadcasting Company began its services in Great
Britain the Commonwealth Government took the first steps in the establish-
ment of similar services. Early in 1924 a wider scheme of control was pre-
pared, ensuring the permanency of the service and its gradual extension and
improvement. The second stage of progress in the broadcasting service
lasted for five years. Two classes of licences were granted by the Postmaster-
General-one providing for the establishment and maintenance of stations
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looking as we do on Christian there before us, we see that the features of
her brilliant countenance are as like as brothers and sisters may be—like,
and yet unlike, for the pressure of that great sorrow has fallen lightly on
little Mary’s buoyant spirit. She is still “little Mary,” though her head is
higher now than Christian’s, who calls her so. Those two years have added
no less to her inner growth than to her stature, and Mary Melville, with all
the mirth and joyousness of her earlier girlhood, has the cultivated mind of
a woman now. There are many bright young faces shining in this gay room,
but there is not one like little Mary’s; not one eye in this assembly can boast
such a sunny glance as hers, graver than her peers when it is called to look
on serious things, and beaming then with a youthful wisdom, which tells of
holy thoughts and pure intents within, and anon illumined with such a flash
of genuine mirthfulness and innocent gaiety, so fresh and unconscious in its
happy light, as would startle the sternest countenance into an answering
smile. She is much loved, our sprightly Mary, and is the very sun and light
of the circle she moves in; and friends who have known her from her
childhood, tell one another how like she is to Halbert, and shake their
heads, and are thankful that she can never be exposed to similar
temptations. Do they think that Mary, like her brother, would have fallen,
that she must succumb too, before the adversary’s power, if tried as hardly?
Ah, it is not well that the innocent lamb, so tender, so guileless and gentle,
should be exposed to the power of the wolf, and who can tell but that there
may be deadly danger lurking about her even now.
Christian’s smile grows brighter as it falls on Mary, “little Mary’s”
sparkling face, and her voice is happier and more musical in its modulation
as she answers her affectionate inquiries. They speak truly who say that
Christian has no thought of herself: at this hour Christian would fain be on
her knees in her solitary room, pleading for her lost brother; not lost, deaf
Christian, say not lost—is there not a lingering tone of sweet assurance in
thy mournful heart, which, if thou would’st but hear it, speaks to thee out of
the unknown secret stillness and says, Not lost, not lost, dear Christian,
though thou yet knowest not how the faithful One has answered thy
weeping prayers.
But, hush! little Mary is singing; a simple plaintive melody, as natural in
its pleasant notes, as the dropping of the withered leaves around her absent
brother, in yon far American forest. There is a charm in these old songs
which far surpasses more artistic music, for scarce is there a single ear on
which they fall that has not many remembrances and associations
awakened, or recalled, it may be joyful, it may be sorrowful, connected
with their simple measure and well-known words, and in such, and in no
other, does Mary Melville delight. There is one sitting by Mary’s side who
seems to comprehend what few of the listeners do, or care to do, the
singer’s delicate and sweet expression of the feeling of her well-chosen
song. He has never seen her before to-night, but he seems to have made
wonderfully good use of the short time he has spent beside her; and Mary
has already discovered that the gentleman-like stranger, who devoted
himself to her all through the evening, is a remarkably well-informed,
agreeable man, and quite superior to the frivolous youths who generally
buzz about in Elizabeth’s drawing-room, and form the majority of her
guests. He has brilliant conversational powers, this stranger, and the still
more remarkable art of drawing out the latent faculty in others, and Mary is
half-ashamed, as she sees herself led on to display her hoards of hidden
knowledge, adorned with her own clear perceptions of the true and
beautiful, which, unknown to herself, she has acquired. It is a strange, an
unusual thing with Mary to meet with any mind, save Christian’s, which
can at all appreciate her own, and she is rejoicing in her new companion’s
congenial temperament, and, in a little while, there is a group of listeners
collected round them, attracted by something more interesting than the
vapid conversations which are going on in this large room. Mr. Forsyth’s
accomplishments are universally acknowledged, and he shines resplendent
to night; and one after another, dazzled by his sparkling wit and still more
engaging seriousness, join the circle, of which Mary is still the centre.
“Who would have thought,” say we, with Mrs. James, as she gazes
wonderingly over the heads of her guests on the animated face of her young
sister-in-law,—“who would have thought that Mary knew so much, or could
show it so well!”
Is Christian’s care asleep to-night; what is she doing that she is not now
watching over her precious charge? No, it is not; her eyes, which have
strayed for a moment, are now resting fixed on Mary. See! how her cheek
flushes at that man’s graceful deference. Listen to the laugh that rings from
the merry circle at some sally of his polished wit. Mary looks grave and
anxious for a moment, for his jest has just touched something which she
will not laugh at, and he perceives it, and at once changes his tone, and
turns with polished ease the conversation into a new channel. Is it well that
Christian should be ignorant of one who is engrossing so much of her
sister’s attention? No, it is not; and she feels that it is not; so she calls
James, and is even now, while Mary’s joyousness is returning, anxiously
inquiring of her brother who this stranger is. James does not even know his
name. A cousin of Elizabeth’s brought him to-night, and introduced him as
a friend who had been of great service to him; then Elizabeth herself is
appealed to; Mrs. James is quite sure that Mr. Forsyth is a very respectable,
as well as a very agreeable man; he could never have found his way into her
drawing-room had he been other than that; her cousin never would have
brought him had he not been quite certain and satisfied on that point. He is
very rich, she believes, and very accomplished, she is sure, and, being
unmarried, she is extremely pleased to see him paying so much attention to
Mary. Christian shudders—why, she does not know; but she feels that this is
not well, there is a something in his look—such nonsense! But Christian has
always such strange, such peculiar notions, and is so jealous of all that
approach Mary.
The gay young people that are around Mary make room for Christian, as
she glides in to sit down by her sisters’s side. She is very grave now, as
always; but some of them have heard her story, and all the nature in their
hearts speaks for her in tones of sympathy, and their voices are quieter
always when beside her. Over most of them she has some other power
besides this of sympathetic feeling; there is hardly one there to whom she
has not done some deed of quiet kindness, which would not even bear
acknowledgment; thus they all love Christian. She sits down by Mary’s
side, and her heart grows calmer, and more assured again; for Mary bends
over her, and seeks forgiveness for her momentary forgetfulness. Pardon
from Christian is easily obtained; yet, gentle as she is, it seems not so easy
to win her favour. Mr. Forsyth’s fascinating powers, displayed and exerted
to the full, are all thrown away. See how coldly she listens to and answers
him; nay, how impatient she is of his courteous attentions. What has he
done wrong? what can ail Christian?
Mr. James Melville’s party has been a very brilliant one; but it is all over
now: the street grows suddenly sombre and silent opposite the darkened
windows, and Mrs. James is not in the sweetest of moods: the baby, now
that all the other music has ceased, is exercising his vigorous lungs for the
amusement of the tired household; his weary mamma is aggravated into
very ill-humour, and unfortunately can find no better way of relieving
herself, nor any better object, than by railing at Christian’s folly. Mrs. James
is sure, if Mr. Forsyth were to think of Mary Melville, they might all of
them be both proud and pleased, for he would be an excellent match for her.
She could not think what Christian expected for her—some unheard-of
prodigy she fancied, that nobody but herself ever dreamt of—thus did the
lady murmur on to the great annoyance of James.
But we must leave Mrs. James and her indignation to themselves, that
we may follow the sisters home. They had little conversation on the way.
Christian was silent and absorbed in her own thoughts, and Mary wondered,
but did not disturb her; for Mary, too, has thoughts unusual, which she cares
not to communicate; and soon, again, we are in the old room, no way
changed since we saw it first, three years ago; and Mr. Melville—how shall
we excuse ourselves for passing him over so lightly and so long—is here
unaltered, as much a fixture in his wide, soft chair, as any piece of furniture
in the well-filled room; and Robert, we lost him amid the belles of Mrs.
James’s party! but here he is again, distinct, full grown and manly, and still
retaining the blithe look of old. Christian alone has yet a disturbed
apprehensive expression on her usually calm and placid face, and she
wonders,
“How can James like such parties? it is so different from his wont.”
“Yes,” says Mary innocently, “I wonder that Elizabeth likes them. If
there were just two or three intelligent people like Mr. Forsyth, it would be
so much better.”
Poor Christian!
The protection of the Almighty has been implored “through the silent
watches of the night,” and Mr. Melville’s household is hushed in sleep—all
but Christian; for this quiet hour when all are at rest, is Christian’s usual
hour of thoughtful relaxation and enjoyment. But she had a clouded brow
and an uneasy look when she entered her room to-night—that room of
many memories. At length there is no mist of disquietude to be seen upon
her peaceful face; no doubt in her loving heart: she has gone to the footstool
of the Lord, and borne with her there that child of her tenderness and
affection, over whose dawning fate she has trembled, and has committed
her into the keeping of the Father of all; and she has poured forth, with
weeping earnestness, the longings of her soul for that lost brother, whom
even yet she knows not to be within the reach of prayer. Often has she
thought that Halbert may be dead, since day after day these years have
come and gone, and no tidings from, or of him, have gladdened her heart.
Her spirit has been sick with deferred hope, as month after month went by
and brought no message. But she is calmer to-night; the load is off her soul;
she has entrusted the guardianship of the twain into His hands who doeth all
things well, and with whom all things are possible; and wherefore should
she fear!
The light in her chamber is extinguished, and the moonbeams are
streaming in through the window. A few hours since she watched their
silvery radiance stealing, unheeded and unseen, into yon crowded room,
drowned in the flood of artificial light which filled it, and then she had
thought these rays an emblem of Heaven’s Viceroy—conscience—unknown
and unnoticed, perchance, by those gay people round about her, but even
then marking with silent finger upon its everlasting tablets, the hidden
things of that unseen and inner life in long detail, moment, and hour, and
day, for each one of them. But now, in the silence of her own room, these
beams have another similitude to Christian, as they pour in unconfined,
filling the quiet chamber. They tell her of peace, peace full, sweet, and
unmeasured,—not the peace of a rejoicing and triumphant spirit,—the
sunbeams are liker it,—but of one borne down with trial and sorrow, with a
sore fight of affliction, with a fear and anguish in times past, yet now at rest.
Oh, happy contradiction! distracted with cares and anxieties, yet calm amid
them all, full of the memories of bygone sorrow, of forebodings of sorrows
yet to come, but peaceful withal, how blessed the possession!
It falls upon her form, that gentle moonshine, and her features are lit up
as with a twilight ray of heaven: it lingers over her treasures as though it
loved them for her sake. It streams upon that portrait on the wall, and
illuminates its pensive and unchanging face, as with the shadow of a living
smile; and Christian’s heart grows calm and still within her beating breast,
like an infant’s, and holy scenes of old come up before her liquid eyes, like
ancient pictures, with that steadfast face upon the wall shining upon her in
every one; not so constant in its sad expression, but varying with every
varying scene, till the gathering tears hang on her cheeks like dewdrops,
and she may not look again.
And there is peace in that household this night, peace and sweet serenity,
and gentle hopefulness; for a blessing is on its prayer-hallowed roof and
humble threshold, and angels stand about its quiet doorway, guarding the
children of their King—the King of Kings.
CHRISTIAN MELVILLE.
EPOCH IV.
CHAPTER I.